Creating the Conditions for Effective Professional Learning

District and building leaders expend significant effort planning for those big moments of professional learning, the back-to-school days and the full release days. Facilitators are invited, budgets are allocated, contracts are signed—the year is planned! But the work is not done.

What remains unplanned are the staff meetings and the half days allocated to building-directed time and the coaching rounds and classroom walk-throughs. Agendas for staff meetings and shorter sessions are sometimes pulled together at the last minute. These small spaces, these times that are not yet spoken for, represent a significant opportunity. These times can be leveraged to avoid the knowing-doing gap, in which new learning ends up on a shelf without being implemented.

There are purposeful actions that educational leaders can take to foster the collective teacher efficacy that supports the implementation of the professional learning planned for the year.

In this article, I’ll break down the enabling conditions that make that possible: goal consensus, empowered teachers, cohesive teacher knowledge, and embedded reflective practice.

Goal consensus

Goal consensus requires taking a look at the current state. When working as a district leader, I often facilitated data conversations while also surfacing anecdotal reflections from teachers. From there, I prepared a team to put forward potential areas of focus. Affinity mapping and dot voting are great methods for all participants to see clear themes and priorities emerge from the group. This results in a goal that belongs to the staff, not a goal that is imposed on the staff.

There are many ways to facilitate goal consensus. The important piece is to engage in the process and then remain oriented to the goal, iterating and adjusting as circumstances change over the course of the school year.

Tip: Make the goal visible and come back to the goal when making decisions. Keep it both visually and conversationally in the forefront of the work for the year.

Empowered Teachers

Empowered teachers are crucial to the success of implementing new learning or enacting any change initiative. The goal consensus process is a first step in empowering teachers. The staff makes the decision about what they are collectively working toward as a school community in the context of what they know is already occurring. This establishes a common purpose.

In my work, one method I have implemented to empower teachers is flattening hierarchy and placing specific decision-making authority within the relevant work group (or whole staff) for the purpose of creating the greatest level of autonomy possible—while remaining collectively focused on the common goal.

When distributing leadership, it is essential to clearly communicate how decisions will be made. For example, will a work group make a specific decision? Or will they bring a recommendation to colleagues for approval? Or will they make a recommendation for administrator approval? Clarity at the outset alleviates frustration later in the process.

Tip: Create a chart with a series of decision-making processes. When a decision needs to be made, make clear at the outset which of the documented processes is going to be applied to that specific decision.

Cohesive Teacher Knowledge

Another aspect of empowering teachers is elevating teachers to share their expertise. Cohesive teacher knowledge is a result of learning together. This can be accomplished entirely with internal expertise, or it might require outside resources. Either way, the knowledge should be aligned to the common goal. The method(s) for acquiring that knowledge and engaging in application, reflection, and refinement should be largely the result of teacher leadership. Developing cohesive teacher knowledge in this manner leads to staffs with members who are aware of the broad expertise and capacity present within their colleagues.

Tip: Create a tool for yourself that captures the areas of expertise that different members of your staff hold. It can be easy to overlook that your second-grade teacher spent five years teaching in a program for students with significant behavior concerns, or that your librarian used to be a reading interventionist—especially if they did that work before you knew them.

This allows you to directly approach specific staff members and invite them to share their expertise with their colleagues. Once a goal is set, identify who might have expertise to share and what expertise can be sought from outside sources.

Embedded Reflective Practice

Embedded reflective practice should be present in any professional learning process and should be routinely modeled by educational leaders. It is intrinsic to high-functioning professional learning community work and data teams and can be facilitated in staff meetings. Administrators can encourage teachers to enact this practice by ensuring adequate time and resources to engage in an ongoing reflective practice productively.

Tip: Consider modeling and practicing a variety of protocols for reflective practice in staff meetings. This makes your modeling very intentional and provides tools that teacher teams can apply when they are working in small groups.

It is important to recognize that many administrators already do many of these things. Administrators work hard under challenging circumstances and are required to demonstrate an array of competencies and strengths.

The question is not whether these things should be done. The question is how they can be done with intentionality and how momentum can be maintained once a busy school year is in motion.

The purpose of this piece is to provide points of reflection and to encourage administrators to frequently take stock. It is critical to make the enabling conditions known to staff. To distribute responsibility and make teachers informed agents in this work, perform a quarterly check-in. Check in on how the whole staff is doing in relation to those areas of focus—and how those conditions are supporting progress toward the shared goal.

Educational leaders: As you consider these enabling conditions, take time to reflect on what you do well and what you might focus on moving forward. Don’t expect perfection out of the gate. The goal is to keep reflecting and refining in collaboration with your leadership team and your staff.